A growing number of applications require use of a form of very short-range wireless communications. One example of a technology that enables this kind of communication is called near field communications or NFC. NFC is a standards-based technology that aims to provide secure two-way interactions between electronic devices. NFC provides communication up to distances of about 4 or 5 centimeters or less. This makes communications between devices more secure.
NFC and corresponding technology can be used in many different applications/devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs, computers, check-out registers or point-of-sale equipment, vending machines, parking meters, automated teller machines (ATM) etc. NFC devices are often used in payment and other financially critical applications. For example several new mobile phone models have NFC support intended for wireless credit card payment acceptance.
Although the communication range of NFC is limited to a few centimeters, there are still different types of security threats related to NFC. NFC has no protection against eavesdropping and it can be vulnerable to data modifications, data corruption and man-in-the-middle attacks. A typical NFC attack can be done with powerful directional antennas targetting somebody who is authorizing a payment at a shopping terminal or at another place where a phone can be used for wireless payment authorization. Using the antenna, the attacker can force the phone to pair with his system instead of the intended NFC terminal and is thus able to manipulate the transaction. Another type of attack is to use Smart Poster spoofing vulnerabilities to trick NFC clients into paying for merchandise that will be delivered to another vending machine which in turn is monitored by the attacker. Thus, there is a real need to improve security issues related to near field communication techniques.